Think this will add to the competive advantage over Square.
Mint Wireless promises EFTPOS card reader for smart phones this year
http://www.ecommercereport.com.au/mint-wireless-promises-eftpos-card-reader-for-smart-phones-this-year/
When Australian communications minister Malcolm Turnbull tweeted a photo of himself with Twitter creator, Jack Dorsey earlier this month, he also forecast that Dorsey’s latest company, Square, would soon launch in Australia.
Because Dorsey started Twitter, and because Square too has become popular in the United States, Turnbull’s photo certainly added to his reputation as a tech-savvy, in the moment kind of guy.
It also added to the already substantial hype surrounding payments via a smartphone or tablet.
This type of ecommerce is widely forecast to be the ‘next big thing’ and one local company sincerely hoping that happens is Mint Wireless .
Mint is aggressively spruiking its smartphone based payments app, and associated mobile payments products.
And Teoh is doubtless very happy to see Mint mentioned in media reports as a potential partner for Square in any future local roll-out for the US payments company’s services.
So too, no doubt, are his long-suffering shareholders. Mint has been listed on the Australian Stock Exchange for around six years (ASX Code:MNW) , but hasn’t yet managed to turn a profit, or pay a dividend.
That isn’t for want of trying, however, and company founder Alex Teoh and his brother, have both clearly been working hard to make the company successful.
They have given up on being a vendor of mobile phone minutes in Malaysia, and discontinued that business. Instead, and with some success, have been devoting all their efforts on building the company’s payments business.
A series of deals with major partners, including MYOB, and Bank of New Zealand have certainly attracted the markets attention, and particularly the latter.
With the Bank of New Zealand deal, Mint Wireless has supplied a card-reader dongle that enables small businesses to accept Visa and Mastercard card payments through their smart-phones.
BNZ has branded the dongle PayClip, and has already ordered some thousands of the readers from Mint following positive reactions and strong demand from NZ small businesses.
Mint supports the product with a mobile Point of Sale (POS) software solution, and to the extent that the dongle enables merchants to accept cards online, it provides the same functionality as Square’s product in the US.
It is also similar to the Paypal Here and Paymate To Go products already available in the Australian market.
Alex Teoh, Mint Wireless
Speaking to eCommerce Report yesterday, Mint’s Alex Teoh said that there had been no confirmation that Square will launch in the Australian marketplace.
“We believe the minister was simply in America promoting Australian technology” he said
Teoh was able to confirm to eCommerce Report, however, that his company’s dongle or card reader hardware is still restricted to accepting scheme, i.e. VISA and Mastercard credit cards and debit cards.
It cannot read so-called EFTPOS debit cards.
“Yes, that’s correct. EFTPOS cards can’t be accepted in our card reader” he said.
But he promised that this would soon be changing, and before the mandated abolition of signature transactions in Australia on August 1st this year.
“We will be releasing into the Australian market card-reader hardware that will be able to accept chip and PIN transactions well before the mandate comes into effect”
“It will have a different form factor than the current dongle. And it will be linked to the phone via Bluetooth. But it will seamlessly connect with our mobile point of sale software.”
Teoh said that Mint has, since July last year, been able to switch transactions acquired through the software into the Australian payments system for clearing and settlement.
Last year Mint announced that it was partnering with the Bendigo Bank to enable transactions captured via Mint products to be switched in to the Australian payments system.
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